"RCMP report suggests the dramatic plunge in U.S. house prices has caused some gangsters to re-evaluate whether B.C. is really the best place to do business."

From ‘Cheap housing luring Canadian marijuana growers into U.S.: RCMP report‘, The Province, 7 Aug 2011 -
The U.S. housing crash has lured some marijuana growers to move their operations south of the border, according to an internal RCMP report obtained by the Vancouver Sun.
“Some VOC (Vietnamese Organized Crime) groups have moved their marijuana grow operations to the United States where the lower cost of real estate (in some regions) allows them to operate a more profitable enterprise and where they can also avoid police/customs detection at the border,” states the RCMP report.
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For more than a decade Canada has been home to a multi-billion-dollar marijuana-growing industry, the bulk of whose product has been shipped to the U.S.
B.C., where the largest number of those operations are located, has generally been seen as an attractive place for drug gangs to set up shop because the legal penalties for growing marijuana here are more lenient than in the U.S.
However, the RCMP report suggests the dramatic plunge in U.S. house prices has caused some gangsters to re-evaluate whether B.C. is really the best place to do business.
Since 2007, house prices in the U.S. have dropped by roughly a third nationwide and in some markets, like Las Vegas, by more than half.
During that same period, prices in most Canadian cities have been flat or rising, with particularly large price gains in Vancouver.
Growing operations tend to be located in residential properties, so real estate is one of the biggest expenses for growers.
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